The Choices of Life
The choices that we make in life are never easy, and we face many of them in our lifetime. The poem "The Road Not Taken," by Robert Frost is a first person narrative poem in which Frost himself can be considered the speaker. A person walking in the woods is faced with the choice of two roads in which to take. "He would like to explore both roads. He tells himself that he will explore one and then come back and explore the other, but he knows that he will probably be unable to do so" (Arp 808). Through Frost's use of images and symbols, he is able to convey his theme that the choices a person makes in life are ultimately responsible for their future, yet a person can never go back to the past and experience other possibilities. As Frost begins his poem about the road he did not take, he is standing in the woods looking at two different roads that diverge in a yellow wood. "The two roads that "diverged in a yellow wood" represent a critical choice between two ways of life" (Ogilvie 3). If he travel's down one, it leads in one direction, if he takes the other, it leads him somewhere different. "Words are symbols of concepts, which have acquired connotation of feeling in addition to their denotation of
The third stanza begins interestingly by saying "And both that morning equally lay, in leaves no step had trodden black" (Arp 807). Faced with many different choices, man is forced to choose the path in which he will take. The sigh was to show that the road has not been easy. The fork in the road represents the speaker's encounter of having to choose from two paths a direction that will affect the rest of his life. He has taken the one that he believes to be the better one. "What ultimately makes Frost's best poems valuable, however, is their dynamic view of our daily life" (Johnson 1). This is done on purpose, and is an example of imagery. He suggests that we should look at both choices very carefully, before we choose one, to look down both paths as far as we can, and try to make the best decision. Will it be the road that everyone else took, or will it be the road less traveled? The choice a person makes in life, ultimately determines the path in which the rest of their life will follow. "And sorry I could not travel both" (Arp 807), Frost goes on to say; because the speaker wishes that he could experience both paths. "Oh, I kept the first for another day" (Arp 807), seems to suggest that the traveler plans to return, on a different day, and find out where that path leads. The last two lines of the poem state that he took the road less traveled, and that made all the difference in his life. The fact that the speaker took the path that had not been traveled much shows that he did not want to be like everyone else. In line 18, the speaker repeats the first line, leaving out the word yellow. Had he not taken this road, he world not be the man he is now.
Common topics in this essay:
Greenberg Hepburn,
Robert Frost,
Choices Life,
arp 807,
choices life,
frost's poems,
stanza speaker,
road traveled,
poem road,
person makes life,
makes life ultimately,
rest life,
life ultimately,
person makes,
makes life,
|
Acceptance Essays
